Who knows Eduardo Fernandez* knows about his intelligence and perverse mind. Also of his pride and explosiveness. But there were few who were not surprised by the way sought to obtain 250 million pesos from Televisain exchange of his silence so as not to publicly disclose what he called his “corrupt practices” business, which he left in writing in a six-leaf letter, more typical of a kidnapper than from a lawyer trained in finance.
That letter sent to Televisa executives on March 14, 2023, basis of the complaint for extortion which the company filed two weeks later in the Attorney General's Office of Mexico City, has an “annex” with two points, the “consideration” required and the “logistics in case of settlement.” It has no waste.
The “consideration” of 250 million pesos, he indicated, should be delivered in bills “of the highest denomination possible or the equivalent in USD in bills of 100, or a combination.” Once they collected the cash, “your staff will bring me the packages in an appropriate cargo vehicle, without logos, no more than 2.20 meters in total height, 2.10 meters in total width and maximum 7.6 meters in length.
“These personnel will park the vehicle in the garage of the building whose address is specified below and will deliver the set or sets of keys to the small reception on the same ground floor.” The address he provided in the National Army was that of his office, and the dimensions of the vehicle probably have to do with the car elevator in the building where it is located.
The instructions were precise. The money would have to be delivered on Wednesday, March 29, 2023 at 7 in the morning, and the vehicle would be returned on March 31 at five in the afternoon in Goethe, a street next to his office. They would collect the keys on the ground floor of the building where his office is located. His mentality at the time of writing the annex seemed more like that of a criminal than that of a financier, although it is not understandable that someone knowledgeable would ask for cash, knowing the difficulties of banking it.
Fernández is a person who knows banking and financial regulations perfectly, but also their legal loopholes. For six years he was the terror of businessmen, as president of the Banking and Securities Commission (CNBV) in the government of President Ernesto Zedillo, where he had more power than what the SAT and the Financial Intelligence Unit could add today. of the Ministry of Finance.
Protected by the then Secretary of the Treasury, Guillermo Ortiz, Fernández was the government's financial weapon. Their tool, unlike what the SAT and the FIU do today, was not the preparation of blacklists to judicially pursue their objectives, but rather the prior opinion of a crime, which was the essential requirement for the Ministry of Finance to file a complaint. for banking, stock market and financial crimes. Fernández's power lay in the fact that he was the one who forgave freedoms, burned businessmen and bankers with green wood, or took them to jail.
Fernández had two executive arms, Pedro Zamora, legal vice president, and Octavio Sosa León, director of Crimes and Sanctions, whom he appointed outside the law. The Legal Vice Presidency was created expressly by him, and when the Supreme Court of Justice reviewed the procedure, it determined that it was unconstitutional and that since it had not been established by presidential decree, everything it had done was null and void. Worse still, Sosa León, who signed the crime opinions, had not graduated as a lawyer at that time nor did he have a professional license. “That is to say – as a lawyer who suffered them said -, the fiefdom that Eduardo Fernández created was based on an illegal presidency and a usurper by profession.”
Businessmen and lawyers who suffered their years in the CNBV remember that they were called to secret meetings at the Commission's headquarters in Plaza Inn at night, in an empty floor where there was a large meeting room with the agency's logo, where they discussed the possibility of issuing non-criminal opinions in exchange for money. There were never any complaints out of fear, and when some businessman did not accept the proposed arrangement and dared to take a step forward, he ended up detained in Military Camp Number 1, from which he left under direct orders from Zedillo.
Fernández lived through turbulent times when he left office. He claims to have been the operator of Fobaproa, for which we Mexicans continue to pay his debt, and he was under arrest accused of allegedly having sold to the PRI in 25 million pesos secret banking information about Amigos de Fox, the group that brought Vicente Fox to the Presidency. Some time after being released from prison, he founded a small brokerage firm in New York that, at his insistence, managed some personal accounts of Televisa executives for three years.
His business went bankrupt and his debts grew. She asked Televisa executives for help about three years ago, who offered it to her, but not in money. In reaction, Fernández filed a complaint against the company with the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, despite the fact that in 2016 he exonerated it, relying on the system of rewards for whistleblowers of the Dodd-Frank Act. His complaint was unsuccessful and he was not rewarded either. A year and a half later, he escalated the pressure against the Televisa executives who responded with the extortion complaint against him, which is why today he is imprisoned in Spain.
*For transparency purposes, I clarify that I am the host of a news program on Foro TV and a member of the Third Degree panel on Televisa. On the other hand, I sued the company that publishes the newspaper 24 Horas, where Eduardo Fernández is one of the partners, and I won the case, where the judge, for reasons that are not clear, has stopped the execution of the ruling and has not established the economic penalty to that company.
X: @rivapa
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